VIDEOS: Opening forum presenters

Innovation is the new buzzword in the post-recession, pre-recovery world of cities.

And in a two-day conference that ended Thursday in Balboa Park, the Urban Land Institute and Aspen Institute think tanks brought together thinkers and doers who had lots of suggestions but no single formula for success.

An Austin, Texas, councilman said his city's love of the "weird" turns out to be a turn-on to high-tech companies.

A San Francisco planner said redevelopment has brought new vitality to an old rail yard by the bay but not yet a solution to the city's very visible homeless problem.

As Carol Coletta, president of ArtPlace that promotes arts in improving places, said: "I think this is the start of an exciting conversation that will continue in locations around the globe."

The Aspen Institute plans to start annual conferences next year on the future of cities in an innovation-oriented age. ULI also plans to make innovation forum as a big part of its national conference next spring in San Diego.

But Dan Van Epp, a ULI trustee and executive vice president of San Diego-based Newland Communities, said the development industry traditionally has not been a leader in advancing technology in city or community building.

"What we're trying to do is lead us out of this terrible mess we've been in the last six or seven years and think about what the future of real estate can be, not just for us but across the world."

The Global Forum on the Culture of Innovation focused on "growing more ideas per square inch" and San Diego as the host city naturally figured prominently on the agenda.

Mayor Jerry Sanders touted the city's welcoming of innovative companies and individuals. But he joked, half-seriously, that San Diego's success has come with a price:

"We're a city of small companies that grow to be big and one of you from a larger city comes and buys those companies." He left unsaid that some of those companies take the local startups and relocate them elsewhere.

For all San Diego can boast about its clusters of biomedicine, wireless communication and military research and development, some of its participants did have some misgivings about life here.

Duane Roth, CEO of the Connect nonprofit that matches academics with entrepreneurs, said the lack of plentiful local venture capital funding to develop products keeps San Diego from being even more successful.

"We have more good opportunities than capital available," he said.

Added Zach Pennier, an executive at DPR Construction focusing on energy-efficient buildings: "The venture capital piece is really important to creating seed money for all startups and spinoffs."

Austin City Councilman Chris Riley reminded the audience of about 200 that cities cannot always dictate how they grow and pick their moniker promote innovation.

Its reputation as "the live music capital of the world" grew into the South by Southwest music festival, but that originated with a proposal by a local alternative weekly newspaper, not the main daily in town, he said.

And Austin residents like to sport bumper stickers that tout the city as "weird." And that quirky adjective comes up when projects and programs get debated, apparently as a way to keep politicians from getting too carried away with trendy ideas.

"That's not something that can come from the city," he said of the love of the weird. "It would not be very effective if it came from the city (officials)."

But Austin has become a tech capital, partly because weird ideas have turned into successful ventures and lured entrepreneurs.

Numerous ideas and checklists filled attendees' notebooks as they searched for magic bullets to make their cities and companies more innovative.

OBSERVE

Fred Dust, partner in the IDEO consulting firm in New York City, said rather than ask a lot of questions, innovators need to engage in a lot of "deep observation."

"Watch things for longer than a minute," he said.

He offered as an example a pet store in New York's Tribeca neighborhood, where passersby linger to play with puppies and within 20 minutes other people stop by to watch people watching other people befriending each other and picking up a date.

Dust also said one Brooklyn doctor posted his calendar online, invited potential clients to make their own appointments and prepay through PayPal and soon had hundreds of appointments. The result was "Hello Health," a startup funded by venture capitalists.

"He put a simple prototype into the field with just a few pieces of technology," he said.

USE SPACE TO CHANGE CULTURE

Pixar was held up as a prototype for developing office space conducive to innovation.

Thomas Robinson, principal at LEVER Architecture for a new Pixar headquarters in Silicon Valley, said how space is configured can promote imagination and creativity.

Daylit common space on the ground floor, surrounded by a game room, restaurant and offices -- all with the idea of forcing employees to collaborate: "All this space is packed into a space that gives people reasons to actually come to the center of the space."

Greg Brandeau, former technology officer for Pixar and its parent Walt Disney Co., reminded his listeners that making a blockbuster movie - and by extension any innovative product or concept - is not easy.

"It's messy -- you don't know what will happen on a given day so you need to be flexible," he said.

But setting the corporate culture can facilitate success he said: "We've created a community where people feel like they're part of the process and have ownership of the end product."

NOT ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED

In San Francisco, home to so many innovative companies, success hasn't solved all urban problems.

Amy Neches, partner in TMG Partners and a former San Francisco redevelopment planner for projects like the transformation of former railroad yards into the Mission Bay biotech center, acknowledged the hundreds of homeless individuals on the streets, even after all the money and effort spent to address their problems.

"The problem has plagued cities for a long time," she said. "It dates back to the deinstitutionalization of health care (for the mentally ill). It's a problem San Francisco struggles with and it's a national problem. It's a very, very hard issue."